Yesterday, the New York Times reported on a sharp global decline in maternal deaths. This is good news, right? Not to some. The Times also reported that some activists sought to pressure the Lancet into delaying or downplaying the findings.
some advocates for women’s health tried to pressure The Lancet into delaying publication of the new findings, fearing that good news would detract from the urgency of their cause, [Lancet editor] Dr. [Richard] Horton said in a telephone interview.“I think this is one of those instances when science and advocacy can conflict,” he said.
Dr. Horton said the advocates, whom he declined to name, wanted the new information held and released only after certain meetings about maternal and child health had already taken place.
He said the meetings included one at the United Nations this week, and another to be held in Washington in June, where advocates hope to win support for more foreign aid for maternal health from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Other meetings of concern to the advocates are the Pacific Health Summit in June, and the United Nations General Assembly meeting in December.
“People who have spent many years committed to the issue of maternal health were understandably worried that these figures could divert attention from an issue that they care passionately about,” Dr. Horton said. “But my feeling is that they are misguided in their view that this would be damaging. My view is that actually these numbers help their cause, not hinder it.”
Hat tip: Ron Bailey. More from Matt Ridley.
pchuck says:
fearing that good news would detract from the urgency of their cause,
I’m sure this is just an isolated event and no other advocacy groups feel this way in regards to their own cause.
April 15, 2010, 6:57 pmneurodoc says:
Congratulations to The Lancet‘s editor for getting this right. They haven’t always done so, and they don’t eschew political advocacy entirely.
April 15, 2010, 7:00 pmMark N. says:
I’m somewhat confused by the sequence of events that even led to those discussions happening. How do miscellaneous activist groups have knowledge that The Lancet is or isn’t going to publish something, before it’s done so? Leaks from its staff or from reviewers? The peer-reviewed publications whose processes I’m familiar with don’t normally have discussions with outside groups before publishing, since outside groups aren’t supposed to know what’s going on inside the confidential peer-review process.
April 15, 2010, 7:01 pmSammy Finkelman says:
What this article reports is that there has been a decline in general, all over the world, of about 65% in the last 30 years.
One very obvious caveat is that there may simply be a lot fewer women getting pregnant (or an increase in abortions especially in high risk pregnancies)
The statistic is not the probability of a pregnant woman dying in childbirth but the number (or probability in a specified country) of a womnan dying in childbirth, regardless of the number of pregnant women.
In the United States where we have more high risk pregnancies , and more pregnanices in generalthan some countries, and fewer abortions, the rate has risenm slightly.
April 15, 2010, 7:02 pmElliot says:
Reminds me a bit of the UN’s bogus claim the glaciers were melting to keep up the pressure for their cause.
April 15, 2010, 7:10 pmmariner says:
That depends.
If the cause is maternal health, the numbers are good. Bit if the cause is more money and political power, not so much.
I think we know which is the real cause.
April 15, 2010, 7:21 pmdearieme says:
Dr. Horton said “…actually these numbers help their cause, not hinder it”. Dr Horton misses the point that he should publish irrespective of whether the numbers help or hinder these bullies.
“they don’t eschew political advocacy entirely”: I admire your masterly command of understatement, neurodoc.
April 15, 2010, 7:37 pmChris Travers says:
Exhibit A
April 15, 2010, 7:37 pmPubliusFL says:
“Maternal deaths drop, women and . . . oh, wait.”
April 15, 2010, 7:43 pmSammy Finkelman says:
One reason why the “advocacy groups”, whoever they are, attempted to at least stall the publication of this story, is that there apparently has been a conspiracy to created false data in this area, and people associated with them may be involved.
As the New York Times reports:
” [Dr. Horton]….said the new study was based on more and better data, and more sophisticated statistical methods than were used in a previous analysis by a different research team that estimated more deaths, 535,900 in 2005. The authors of the earlier analysis, published in The Lancet, in 2007, included researchers from Unicef, Harvard, the World Bank, the World Health Organization and the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. The World Health Organization still reports about half a million maternal deaths a year, but is expected to issue new statistics of its own this year.”
Let’s read CAREFULLY between the lines:
Those people referred to in the paragraph I quoted above were probably the people trying to stop this from being published.
They would have known about the upcoming article because of peer review.
At first, they probably tried to kill it with peer review. But they were probably not able to do so because this is basically a meta study that uses publicly available data and it was impossible to argue that the way Dr. Christopher J. L. Murray of the University of Washington and their associates at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia were using statistics was wrong and the way they had used statistics was right. The opponents did not have the kind of power some climate scientists would like to have over the peer review process.
There was no stopping it, especially since the new study was backed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Institute for Health Metrics and evaluation at the University of Washington,
See http://www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/
had probably already developed a reputation based on other studies and the enemies of the article couldn’t now suddenly say these people were biased or unscientific or inexperienced or something like that.
When the opponents failed to stop it they then probably called in people in various advocacy groups, who resorted to other arguments based on alleged expediency – for mothers. Money would be cut from medical porograms and people would die. And so on.
Now The Lancet just couldn’t corrupt itself like that, and besides which it wasn’t too logical. You could make a case that this proved the value of spending money. well, you could itf you didn’t break down the statistics too much. We all know that money is fungible and it is very hard to actually increase health expenditures in certain countries.
The only thing was of course that the real issue of expediency involved was protecting scientific fraud.
Now when they couldn’t get it altogether suppressed, (which is what they probably tried to do even though the New York Times does not say that – but remember they would only be reporting the final stage of the conflict) finally at the end they prepared to correct their own research.
They wanted to get some time so it could look like they were correcting themselves on their own, but of course used other reasons – wait tilkl ameeting held at the United Nations in April. No, a meeting that will be held in Washington in June. Would you believe, the Pacific Health Summit in June? How about the end of United Nations General Assembly mneeting in December?
In not expressing more curiosity over the names and identities of the people who tried to stop or delay publication or the article, the New York Times is avoiding the most interesting aspect of this story, even though it is the editor of Lancet, Dr. Richard Horton, who is keeping their identities a secret.
If the truth were known, it could have wide ramifications all over the place. This is very much another ClimateGate situation and we don’t know how far it extends.
April 15, 2010, 7:44 pmfgmorley says:
Yes I’m sure they are honest, true, law-abiding, and as honest as the climatologist at the English university that did all the research about Al Gore’s pet project: Global Warming.
I’m sorry to inform you scientists or researchers. You are fools when it comes to playing in the political arena. You are idiots if you do not believe that any of your research will not be used to foster or forward someone’s political agenda.
April 15, 2010, 7:47 pmEH says:
Yea, though we are fortunate to bask in such critical glory, the exception still does not prove the rule.
“Idiots,” you say! Is that a technical term?
A lack of research can be used, and I would say is more commonly used for political purposes. “Not purchasing health care will put you in jail.” See how it works?
Personally I’d rather have errors of interpretation than errors of abject ignorance, but there’s no accounting for taste.
April 15, 2010, 8:03 pmOpenVolokh says:
One thing “advocates” should always remember, whether on the left or the right, should remember is that your first loyalty must always be to the truth.
As soon as you are seen as trying to conceal the truth, you are going to hurt your cause much more than whatever information you are trying to conceal.
April 15, 2010, 8:11 pmRPT says:
In other news, the taxes of 95% of the tea partiers are less under Obama than under Bush. Don’t expect to hear that today.
April 15, 2010, 9:15 pmOperationCounterstrike says:
This sort of thinking happens in ALL non-profit charity causes. Including conservative ones.
April 15, 2010, 9:16 pmOperationCounterstrike says:
When there’s good news about your cause, donors feel less urgency to donate. Happens to everyone. If you’re a charity fundraiser to fight tuberculosis, it’s bad news for you if tuberculosis gets cured. From a professional point of view–it lowers your ability to raise money.
April 15, 2010, 9:18 pmStrict says:
fgmorley: “the climatologist at the English university that did all the research about Al Gore’s pet project: Global Warming.”
The University of East Anglia did not do all the research on global warming.
A main source of climate information is the Global Historical Climatology Network.
There are several other archives, databases, and research institutions.
Today, the United States Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that March 2010 was, according to scientific consensus [sorry, it's true: confirmed by databases at NASA, National Space Science and Technology Center, and Remote Sensing Systems], the warmest March in recorded history….
April 15, 2010, 9:24 pmStrict says:
“From a professional point of view–it lowers your ability to raise money.”
But that’s only if the problem is eradicated.
Otherwise, a track record of success toward solving the problem is probably the number one fundraising tool. Grantmakers do not give money to untested programs or programs with a record of failure. Rather, they are “frontrunners” and join the winning team. In a grant proposal, if you can link your program with measures of success, you are much more likely to get funding. It’s not about stressing how everything is getting worse, so please give us money.
April 15, 2010, 9:27 pmOpenVolokh says:
That is ridiculous. If a researcher found a cure for disease X, that researcher would be set for life with funds to cure disease Y. Also, if you are a good fundraising organization that can raise money for disease X, you are a good fundraising organization that can raise funds for disease Y. If you could point how your organizations previous work lead to success (especially by providing funds for research that would not have otherwise occurred except your funds), you would as an organization REALLY be set.
Putting a man on the moon did not put NASA out of business. Far from it.
April 15, 2010, 10:31 pmMalvolio says:
In still other news, the share of the national debt of 100% of the tea partiers is four times higher under Obama than under Bush.
Party on, dude.
April 15, 2010, 10:34 pmPurple Koolaid says:
Is Obama renewing Bush’s tax cuts?? I heard he is letting them expire.
April 16, 2010, 12:28 amtheobromophile says:
Silly question: isn’t there an upside to reduced maternal deaths in terms of obtaining funding? I mean, if you can demonstrate that some amount of money was actually effective and reduced the maternal death rate, you could argue for more funding for even more effectiveness, right?
It just seems like people shouldn’t be throwing money around at programmes that don’t actually achieve good results.
April 16, 2010, 1:05 amSammy Finkelman says:
In this connection:
The March of Dimes faced a critical situation when the polio vaccine came along.
They switched to birth defects, which has the advantage of having multiple different causes and no prospect of total or near elimination.
April 16, 2010, 1:32 amSammy Finkelman says:
We’re talking 2009 and 2010, not 2011 or later.
April 16, 2010, 1:33 amProm Night 4 ‘Carry Me Through’ Episode 6 “Selfish” | New Twilight Book says:
[...] The Volokh Conspiracy » When Good News Isn’t Good News [...]
April 16, 2010, 3:09 amStrict says:
“Silly question: isn’t there an upside to reduced maternal deaths in terms of obtaining funding?”
Not a silly question at all. And the answer is yes.
April 16, 2010, 9:24 amrpt says:
Taxes are still less for 95% of taxpayers. That was the point. If you are a deficit peacock you waited eight years to start complaining.
April 16, 2010, 9:50 amKen Arromdee says:
Putting a man on the moon did put NASA out of business. Oh, not completely; NASA is still around. But after the first moon landing, the public quickly got tired of moon landings, the space program ceased to be of much use for political purposes, the program was quickly slashed, the infrastructure left to decay, and NASA’s budget drastically reduced.
April 16, 2010, 10:39 amPurple Koolaid says:
First of all, you cannot even COMPARE the deficit under Bush to the deficit under Obama.
April 16, 2010, 10:41 amSecond of all, you’re right. My family did pay less taxes under Obama bc my husband’s job suffered huge losses due to recession and he received a 17% pay cut, so yes, less pay means less taxes.
Strict says:
“But after the first moon landing…NASA’s budget drastically reduced.”
Not really. NASA’s budget in 1969 was almost identical to its budget in 1979. [Of course, the spending power of those dollars was reduced by the Great Inflation in the 1970s...]
NASA’s success landing on the moon may have hurt NASA’s ability to get funding to do another moon landing, but it certainly didn’t hurt NASA’s prestige or its ability to get funding for other projects [projects which required much less funding than the moon landing project].
The moon landing was a completed project. Of course completion of a project will result in decreased or eliminated funding for a second, identical or similar project. The issue here is simply progress toward a stated goal. Progress generally does not hurt funding.
April 16, 2010, 11:38 amChris Travers says:
I didn’t wait to complain but then I’m not a tea partier.
April 16, 2010, 1:59 pmBama 1L says:
I aspire to this level of cynicism.
April 16, 2010, 2:35 pmHyman Rosen says:
“Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.”
April 16, 2010, 2:37 pmTim says:
But certainly NOT the warmest in history!
Maybe the women’s health advocates can become environmentalists, like the anti-nuclear activists from the 60′s did. I guess it’s hard for an activist to keep a steady job!
April 16, 2010, 2:48 pmCharles Higley says:
It would be wrong to assume that all good news detracts from important issues. How does one win a war, if all of the reports are loses? With this approach, you could be winning a war and decide to surrender instead.
Heaven forbid that funding of anything ever be cut, but the real world is that funding gets cut as funding is not limitless (except in Obama’s world).
“No, dear, money does not grow on trees—it grows on taxpayers, then you harvest it.”
Hyman Rosen says:
“Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.”
This is perfect – what the IPCC is all about. They cannot afford to not find warming as that is their mission – to study it. It is a forgone conclusion that the planet is warming. Without warming, their raison-d’être is gone and Pachy will have to write more porn.
April 16, 2010, 3:04 pmDerHahn says:
The key to understand the disjoint between the report and response is to study this paragraph on the reasons for the decline.
The study cited a number of reasons for the improvement: lower pregnancy rates in some countries; higher income, which improves nutrition and access to health care; more education for women; and the increasing availability of “skilled attendants” — people with some medical training — to help women give birth. Improvements in large countries like India and China helped to drive down the overall death rates.
and note the euphemism employed to identify the groups that wanted the publication blocked.
But some advocates for women’s health tried to pressure The Lancet into delaying publication of the new findings, fearing that good news would detract from the urgency of their cause, Dr. Horton said in a telephone interview.
That should be familar as the favored way for the MSM to identify pro-abortion groups without identifing what they advocate. It’s an article of faith among among pro-abortion NGO’s that maternal death rates are linked to the ability to terminate high-risk pregnancies. The report specifically contradicts their position.
April 16, 2010, 3:07 pmKen Arromdee says:
You say that as if it didn’t negate your whole argument. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_budget ; it’s very obvious that the budget went down after the moon years and stayed down, in constant dollars.
And no, the moon landing wasn’t a completed project. It’s not as if NASA found out everything it could using just one moon landing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canceled_Apollo_missions
April 16, 2010, 9:31 pmSammy Finkelman says:
Six moon landings, although they were planning more.
April 19, 2010, 12:10 pmSammy Finkelman says:
It has to be this, because the more logical thing to switch to would have been to a different disease which they also could develop a vaccine to, or to a specific condition – like paralysis where they could hoope for a cure or better treatment.
Birth defects meant they would never suffer even a temporary loss in fundraising due to success. There was apparently a big debate around 1958 as to whether or not it should go out of business.
I just read in wikipedia that the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis didn’t adopt the name March of Dimes until much later – “March of Dimes” was actually the name of their annual fundraising event and was a play on the phrase “March of Time” and couined by Eddie Cantor. That’s part of teh reason FDR is on the dime ratehr tahn some other coin – also it was the only major coin left without a picture of someone on it.
Incidentally there is now speculation that Franklin Delano Roosevelt did not have polio, but rather Guillain-Barré syndrome. Except wait – are the eeffscts of Guillain-Barré permanent. I think a person usually receovers unless they die from the paralysis when it is at its height. This article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_D._Roosevelt%27s_paralytic_illness says that about 15% of Guillain-Barré syndrome cases have have permanent neurological sequelae. But this particlar kind of sequelae?
Ity says at that time there should have been a little more than 50% as many cases of Guillain-Barré as polio by people in his age group.
I think maybe a variant somewhat weaker than usual polio virus would make more sense.
April 19, 2010, 12:27 pmPamella Sproul says:
I’ve heard about Courts using video conferencing technologies especially in the rural areas and villages. Even though it’s an expensive approach but it’s a great way for developing these areas.
July 31, 2010, 1:58 pm